So this winter I've finally done it: I'm living and working at a ski resort. Specifically I'll be the guy renting you your skis at a shop in Vail Village. I've been working there two weeks so far and am excited for the season to begin. So far we've just been organizing and cleaning up the place, getting ready. I'm also looking forward to taking advantage of the gear discounts I get because I work there. Upon seeing my skis, all of my coworkers have told me I need new ones, so they're on the list. Along with boots, goggles, avy gear (prope, beacon, and shovel), and gloves. I already bought telemark boots and skis.
This past Friday was Vail's opening day, and despite having the day off, I didn't get up on the mountain. Nor did I go today. There's only one trail open and according to friends who did go everyone in the Vail valley was up there, so I figured I can do without the crowds. I'll finally be skiing tomorrow, and probably the 4 days after that, as there's still not much to do at work and my boss said we're welcome to take alternating ski breaks.
Provided I don't get bored I'll equal my number of ski days from last season (a respectable 18 considering I was living in Wisconsin) before December is half over. The real question is, can I ski 100 days this season?
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
States and Ultimate
A while ago I realized I've been lucky enough to do a lot of traveling, and also play in a lot of ultimate tournaments, so I made spreadsheets to keep track of it and aid my memory. I love spreadsheets. Here is the summary of the data, including the District of Columbia:
States I've been to: 50 (all except Alaska)
States I've driven across: 45
States I've slept a night in: 46 (no WV, MI, or MS)
States the Jeep made it to: 47 (no CA, AK, MI, or HI)
States my Subaru has been to: 16 (in just over 4 months)
States I've lived in: 8
States I've climbed the high point of: 15
States I've skiied in: 9
States I've played ultimate in: 31
Ultimate tournaments played: 76 (over 6 years)
Most Tournaments played in one year: 20 (2008)
Career Winning %: 59.3 (262-180)
Finals Appearances: 12
Tournament Victories: 7 (3 with M.U.T., 3 with Dartmouth, 1 with Madison)
Teams Played For: 23 (not counting hat tournies)
Most tourneys with one team: Dartmouth A (24), (2nd is Pimpdags with 12)
Callahans: 2
I thought this was all interesting at least.
States I've been to: 50 (all except Alaska)
States I've driven across: 45
States I've slept a night in: 46 (no WV, MI, or MS)
States the Jeep made it to: 47 (no CA, AK, MI, or HI)
States my Subaru has been to: 16 (in just over 4 months)
States I've lived in: 8
States I've climbed the high point of: 15
States I've skiied in: 9
States I've played ultimate in: 31
Ultimate tournaments played: 76 (over 6 years)
Most Tournaments played in one year: 20 (2008)
Career Winning %: 59.3 (262-180)
Finals Appearances: 12
Tournament Victories: 7 (3 with M.U.T., 3 with Dartmouth, 1 with Madison)
Teams Played For: 23 (not counting hat tournies)
Most tourneys with one team: Dartmouth A (24), (2nd is Pimpdags with 12)
Callahans: 2
I thought this was all interesting at least.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Concert
I'm not much of one for concerts. In fact I've only been to 4 in my life: A Beatles tribute band with my parents when I was in middle school (awkward), Michael Franti & Spearhead last winter (awesome), Dropkick Murphey's this past fall (my ears still hurt), and one this past weekend. A lot of my friends like going to concerts, probably because they're from places where cool bands like to play, like New York, Boston, or California. If I was a from a place where Dave Matthews plays every year, I'd probably have gone too. Unfortunately the only big names that ever seemed to play in Oklahoma were Garth Brooks, Toby Keith, Faith Hill, and the like.
Until this past weekend. In a scheduling decision that still baffles me, the Black Eyed Peas were opening for U2 (U fucking 2!) at OU's football stadium on October 18th. Both of these bands are on my relatively short list of bands I would be willing to see in concert, so of course I went and also made a special trip to Colorado to bring Mar along too. My parents, as providers of the tickets, were also present, a situation that actually wasn't as awkward as you might think provided that I didn't look at them while I was dancing and singing along to 'My Humps'.
BEP especially played a lot lip service to their presence in my home town, with Wil.i.am frequently uttering phrases such "What's up [pause] Oklahoma!" and "it's so great to be here in [pause] Oklahoma" as if he himself couldn't quite understand what he was doing in this state. U2 was a little smoother in their location mention, referencing their 1983 concert at OU's basketball arena a mile down the road. "It took us 26 years to make it that last mile" Bono said at one point, which sounded sweet at the time, like we were all part of U2's odyssey as a rock band, but could also be interpreted as 'it took us 26 years before we were willing to come back'.
Poking fun at my heritage aside, this was an amazing concert. The crowd of 60,000 was rowdy and knew the lyrics when asked to sing along, and both bands flat out rocked. I was a little worried about how the BEP's would sound given the heavy use of computer sound effects in their music, but they sounded great, getting me jumping up and down and yelling the lyrics as they sang "I gotta feeling', and setting most of the girls (especially including Mar) in the stadium screaming as Fergie let the guys rest and sang "Big Girls Don't Cry".
Of special note was the stage, which cost over $30 million, looks like space ship, and it nicknamed 'The Claw'. After U2's opening song, Bono paused and greeted the crowd saying "how do you like our Mothership?". U2 clearly has played a lot of concerts on this stage, and knew extremely well how to use all the features of the stage's ability to play in the round to make it feel like each section in the stadium was close up to the band and being played to specifically. My favorite two songs that U2 played were probably "Beautiful Day", which allowed to Bono to fully utilize his emotional, arms-spread-to-the-sky style of singing (that and the stage turned blue! See below), and "Sunday Bloody Sunday", which is simply one of the best songs ever and was amazing to hear live.
Finally for those of you interested in seeing what this concert is like, their performance at the Rose Bowl this Sunday is being streamed live on youtube and U2.com.
Until this past weekend. In a scheduling decision that still baffles me, the Black Eyed Peas were opening for U2 (U fucking 2!) at OU's football stadium on October 18th. Both of these bands are on my relatively short list of bands I would be willing to see in concert, so of course I went and also made a special trip to Colorado to bring Mar along too. My parents, as providers of the tickets, were also present, a situation that actually wasn't as awkward as you might think provided that I didn't look at them while I was dancing and singing along to 'My Humps'.
BEP especially played a lot lip service to their presence in my home town, with Wil.i.am frequently uttering phrases such "What's up [pause] Oklahoma!" and "it's so great to be here in [pause] Oklahoma" as if he himself couldn't quite understand what he was doing in this state. U2 was a little smoother in their location mention, referencing their 1983 concert at OU's basketball arena a mile down the road. "It took us 26 years to make it that last mile" Bono said at one point, which sounded sweet at the time, like we were all part of U2's odyssey as a rock band, but could also be interpreted as 'it took us 26 years before we were willing to come back'.
Poking fun at my heritage aside, this was an amazing concert. The crowd of 60,000 was rowdy and knew the lyrics when asked to sing along, and both bands flat out rocked. I was a little worried about how the BEP's would sound given the heavy use of computer sound effects in their music, but they sounded great, getting me jumping up and down and yelling the lyrics as they sang "I gotta feeling', and setting most of the girls (especially including Mar) in the stadium screaming as Fergie let the guys rest and sang "Big Girls Don't Cry".
Of special note was the stage, which cost over $30 million, looks like space ship, and it nicknamed 'The Claw'. After U2's opening song, Bono paused and greeted the crowd saying "how do you like our Mothership?". U2 clearly has played a lot of concerts on this stage, and knew extremely well how to use all the features of the stage's ability to play in the round to make it feel like each section in the stadium was close up to the band and being played to specifically. My favorite two songs that U2 played were probably "Beautiful Day", which allowed to Bono to fully utilize his emotional, arms-spread-to-the-sky style of singing (that and the stage turned blue! See below), and "Sunday Bloody Sunday", which is simply one of the best songs ever and was amazing to hear live.
Finally for those of you interested in seeing what this concert is like, their performance at the Rose Bowl this Sunday is being streamed live on youtube and U2.com.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Obama in Yellowstone
This would be a better post had I actually written it soon after President Obama visited the park back in August, but whatever. I'm also not quite sure what counts as free information to give out in terms of the logistics of a presidential visit, so I'm going to be careful...
The week before the president visited was a rather hectic one at Yellowstone as every division collectively messed themselves preparing for it. Even geology got involved, as my supervisors were placed on a geyser emergency team for the visit and put on stand by in an undisclosed location to be ready in case something went wrong (Old Faithful doesn't go off?). They also were nice and removed the rather suspicious-looking temperature loggers (a small circular base emitting a radio frequency with a 2 meter wire extending from it) from any pool the President would be near.
The most entertaining part of the preparation was hearing what the wildlife people had to deal with. As anyone who has been to Yellowstone knows, there are a lot of bison there. These bison don't give a crap about cars and will stand in the middle of the road and just stare at you.
Well, apparently it is a major security issue if a presidential motorcade has to make an unscheduled stop (i.e. to avoid hitting a bison), so there were park rangers put in charge of keeping the bison herds away from the motorcade route. How they did that I don't know, I got the feeling while I was in Yellowstone that a bison wouldn't move even if I was bumping it with my car.
Additionally the president's family was going to have a picnic lunch at a location where two ravens known for stealing picnic lunches liked to hang out. The bird people were told to 'get rid of them'. Ravens are smart though. Imagine trying to catch something on the ground that can fly and knows you're trying catch it. Don't know how they pulled that one off either.
Finally, both of these issues ended up being irrelevant as Obama ended up flying in to Old Faithful instead of driving and the picnic was for the staff while the president ate indoors at a lodge. All in all the president was in the park for maybe 3 hours. Just a bit less than the reported average length of a visit to the park (I don't get that stat either). Instead of being annoyed though at the much ado about nothing issues created by the president's visit, my supervisor came away very impressed with the professionalism and quality of the work done by the secret service in preparing the park for the president to visit. Those guys don't mess around and know exactly what they're doing in a very elaborate system. Apparently there are multiple advance teams of agents leap-frogging each other in advance of the presidential visits and also a small fleet of aircraft carrying motorcade vehicles around the country, so that everything is ready before Air Force 1 is even in the region.
As for me, I spent the day Obama was in the park staying as far away as possible. Traffic was already bad enough without having to deal with an Obama-jam. The bison and elk jams were already annoying me enough.
The week before the president visited was a rather hectic one at Yellowstone as every division collectively messed themselves preparing for it. Even geology got involved, as my supervisors were placed on a geyser emergency team for the visit and put on stand by in an undisclosed location to be ready in case something went wrong (Old Faithful doesn't go off?). They also were nice and removed the rather suspicious-looking temperature loggers (a small circular base emitting a radio frequency with a 2 meter wire extending from it) from any pool the President would be near.
The most entertaining part of the preparation was hearing what the wildlife people had to deal with. As anyone who has been to Yellowstone knows, there are a lot of bison there. These bison don't give a crap about cars and will stand in the middle of the road and just stare at you.
Well, apparently it is a major security issue if a presidential motorcade has to make an unscheduled stop (i.e. to avoid hitting a bison), so there were park rangers put in charge of keeping the bison herds away from the motorcade route. How they did that I don't know, I got the feeling while I was in Yellowstone that a bison wouldn't move even if I was bumping it with my car.Additionally the president's family was going to have a picnic lunch at a location where two ravens known for stealing picnic lunches liked to hang out. The bird people were told to 'get rid of them'. Ravens are smart though. Imagine trying to catch something on the ground that can fly and knows you're trying catch it. Don't know how they pulled that one off either.
Finally, both of these issues ended up being irrelevant as Obama ended up flying in to Old Faithful instead of driving and the picnic was for the staff while the president ate indoors at a lodge. All in all the president was in the park for maybe 3 hours. Just a bit less than the reported average length of a visit to the park (I don't get that stat either). Instead of being annoyed though at the much ado about nothing issues created by the president's visit, my supervisor came away very impressed with the professionalism and quality of the work done by the secret service in preparing the park for the president to visit. Those guys don't mess around and know exactly what they're doing in a very elaborate system. Apparently there are multiple advance teams of agents leap-frogging each other in advance of the presidential visits and also a small fleet of aircraft carrying motorcade vehicles around the country, so that everything is ready before Air Force 1 is even in the region.
As for me, I spent the day Obama was in the park staying as far away as possible. Traffic was already bad enough without having to deal with an Obama-jam. The bison and elk jams were already annoying me enough.
Monday, October 05, 2009
The National Park Service
It was very interesting the past 6 months getting to see how the National Park Service operates from the inside, especially since I got to observe it at two very different national parks- Guadalupe Mountains and Yellowstone.
The largest conflict I saw the exists in the management of a national park is balancing protecting the park resources with creating a good visitor experience.
An example of this from Guadalupe starts off like a joke: "How many park rangers does it take to plant a cherry tree?"
The back story is that rangers at Guadalupe are trying to recreate the orchard that existed at a preserved ranch house in the park that now serves as the park's cultural history museum. Trees would provide shade and show visitors how early settlers cultivated in the desert. The answer to the question: 6. 3 to transplant the tree, 1 one to operate a backhoe, and 2 to watch and make sure no potential Native American artifacts were dug up or damaged. Conflicts of the resource vs. visitors were rare at Guadalupe though, mainly due to the management of the park as a wilderness area, which dictated rather strictly what could and could not be done within the park boundary.
Yellowstone is a different story. A good anecdote from there comes from Mammoth. What many people don't realize is that the Park Service is more than just the big wilderness parks we've all heard of (Grand Canyon, Yosemite, etc.), but in fact includes nearly 400 different sites, most of which have a purely cultural significance (Battlefields, monuments, memorials, and the like). Therefore a majority of park service employees, and to a smaller degree park management policy, have very little to do with wilderness. One of the park policies I've seen crop up a couple times is one that dictates any human artifacts more than 50 years old within a park must be preserved by the park.
In Carlsbad Caverns this means rangers are responsible for preserving a pile of trash (empty cans of beans, loose wire, broken light bulbs) left by guano miners in the 1930s. In Yellowstone is means the lush grass of the parade grounds the army created at Mammoth in the early 1900s must be maintained.
This grass provides an artificial food source for a herd of elk that hangs out in Mammoth nearly constantly. I saw the herd probably 4 out of 5 days, in numbers from 20 to over 60. In the fall this herd attracts multiple bull elk during the rut that are very aggressive and often chase visitors who get too close or damage cars or other property.
This is obviously a concern for the park service. A visitor who got chased across the parade ground at Mammoth by a horny bull elk is probably less likely to return, and there are two main ideas on what to do about this: 1) Get rid of the food source. Kentucky bluegrass is not a natural staple of an elk's diet. Get of the grass, get rid of the herd. This is suggested by people in the Yellowstone Center for Resources. 2) You can't get rid of the grass, the park is required by law to preserve it. Instead you have to have park rangers haze the elk (make very loud scary noises, poke them with sticks, make them chug beer, etc.) until they get annoyed and leave.
So one option involves breaking a law while the other involves annoying the crap out of a herd of wildlife, which seems counterproductive to the park's primary missions of preserving a natural environment. Given these options, it's easy to guess what the park is doing about this situation: nothing.
This is but one example of many situations where cultural resources, natural resources, and visitor services clash. Visitor services also pose a problem:
"We want to build this facility here so it's close to this must-see sight"
"But your proposed building is literally on top of a geyser cone"
"So?"
"Really? That needs further explanation as to why it's bad?"
Part of my job this summer was to help my supervisors (the park geologists) research and write reports on the geological hazards associated with proposed developments in the park. I'd elaborate, but I'm not quite sure what I'm at liberty to say, especially online. Lets just say the similarity of some of the projects to the hypothetical conversation above makes me shudder a little, and if you're interested in hearing more, I'll tell you if we talk in person.
The good news in all this is that as long as the resource people, the scientists, provided solid data and evidence, natural resources generally won the argument with the visitor services developers, as least in my limited experience. Additionally, the wilderness is much better off, even with damage done by visitors and development, than it would be if it wasn't a park at all. From what I heard the Wyoming state wolf management policy remains (paraphrased of course) "if you see a wolf, shoot it". Sigh.
The largest conflict I saw the exists in the management of a national park is balancing protecting the park resources with creating a good visitor experience.
An example of this from Guadalupe starts off like a joke: "How many park rangers does it take to plant a cherry tree?"
The back story is that rangers at Guadalupe are trying to recreate the orchard that existed at a preserved ranch house in the park that now serves as the park's cultural history museum. Trees would provide shade and show visitors how early settlers cultivated in the desert. The answer to the question: 6. 3 to transplant the tree, 1 one to operate a backhoe, and 2 to watch and make sure no potential Native American artifacts were dug up or damaged. Conflicts of the resource vs. visitors were rare at Guadalupe though, mainly due to the management of the park as a wilderness area, which dictated rather strictly what could and could not be done within the park boundary.
Yellowstone is a different story. A good anecdote from there comes from Mammoth. What many people don't realize is that the Park Service is more than just the big wilderness parks we've all heard of (Grand Canyon, Yosemite, etc.), but in fact includes nearly 400 different sites, most of which have a purely cultural significance (Battlefields, monuments, memorials, and the like). Therefore a majority of park service employees, and to a smaller degree park management policy, have very little to do with wilderness. One of the park policies I've seen crop up a couple times is one that dictates any human artifacts more than 50 years old within a park must be preserved by the park.
In Carlsbad Caverns this means rangers are responsible for preserving a pile of trash (empty cans of beans, loose wire, broken light bulbs) left by guano miners in the 1930s. In Yellowstone is means the lush grass of the parade grounds the army created at Mammoth in the early 1900s must be maintained.
This grass provides an artificial food source for a herd of elk that hangs out in Mammoth nearly constantly. I saw the herd probably 4 out of 5 days, in numbers from 20 to over 60. In the fall this herd attracts multiple bull elk during the rut that are very aggressive and often chase visitors who get too close or damage cars or other property. This is obviously a concern for the park service. A visitor who got chased across the parade ground at Mammoth by a horny bull elk is probably less likely to return, and there are two main ideas on what to do about this: 1) Get rid of the food source. Kentucky bluegrass is not a natural staple of an elk's diet. Get of the grass, get rid of the herd. This is suggested by people in the Yellowstone Center for Resources. 2) You can't get rid of the grass, the park is required by law to preserve it. Instead you have to have park rangers haze the elk (make very loud scary noises, poke them with sticks, make them chug beer, etc.) until they get annoyed and leave.
So one option involves breaking a law while the other involves annoying the crap out of a herd of wildlife, which seems counterproductive to the park's primary missions of preserving a natural environment. Given these options, it's easy to guess what the park is doing about this situation: nothing.
This is but one example of many situations where cultural resources, natural resources, and visitor services clash. Visitor services also pose a problem:
"We want to build this facility here so it's close to this must-see sight"
"But your proposed building is literally on top of a geyser cone"
"So?"
"Really? That needs further explanation as to why it's bad?"
Part of my job this summer was to help my supervisors (the park geologists) research and write reports on the geological hazards associated with proposed developments in the park. I'd elaborate, but I'm not quite sure what I'm at liberty to say, especially online. Lets just say the similarity of some of the projects to the hypothetical conversation above makes me shudder a little, and if you're interested in hearing more, I'll tell you if we talk in person.
The good news in all this is that as long as the resource people, the scientists, provided solid data and evidence, natural resources generally won the argument with the visitor services developers, as least in my limited experience. Additionally, the wilderness is much better off, even with damage done by visitors and development, than it would be if it wasn't a park at all. From what I heard the Wyoming state wolf management policy remains (paraphrased of course) "if you see a wolf, shoot it". Sigh.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Frisbee Free Agent
I wanted to title this post "Ultimate Sl*t", but figured that would give my blog some unwanted attention.
As was obvious from the previous post, I was in Canada recently, meaning my position at Yellowstone is over. Now begins a month of visiting friends, applying for jobs, studying for the GRE, researching grad schools, and of course, playing ultimate.
Where I'll be/where I was
Sept 12/13: Big Sky Mixed Sectionals with the Bozeman Bozos
Sept 14-20: Glacier and Waterton Lakes National Parks
Sept 21-22: One last trip through Yellowstone and Grand Teton
Sept 26: Avon, CO hat tournament
Oct 3/4: Hucktoberfest with Mad Udderburn in Whitewater, WI
Oct 10/11: Potentially Central Club Regionals, spectating and learning to use twitter
Oct 17/18: Black Eyed Peas and U2 in Concert in my hometown!
Oct 24/25: Fright Flight in Ft. Collins, CO with an Avon/Breck group.
Nov: Frozen Disc of Death in Hanover, NH, with M.U.T. gotta keep the win streak going...
My new car (now designated 'Roo') will be racking up the miles, but it should be a good time, provided my job search, GRE studying, and grad school investigations go well. More on that later.
As was obvious from the previous post, I was in Canada recently, meaning my position at Yellowstone is over. Now begins a month of visiting friends, applying for jobs, studying for the GRE, researching grad schools, and of course, playing ultimate.
Where I'll be/where I was
Sept 12/13: Big Sky Mixed Sectionals with the Bozeman Bozos
Sept 14-20: Glacier and Waterton Lakes National Parks
Sept 21-22: One last trip through Yellowstone and Grand Teton
Sept 26: Avon, CO hat tournament
Oct 3/4: Hucktoberfest with Mad Udderburn in Whitewater, WI
Oct 10/11: Potentially Central Club Regionals, spectating and learning to use twitter
Oct 17/18: Black Eyed Peas and U2 in Concert in my hometown!
Oct 24/25: Fright Flight in Ft. Collins, CO with an Avon/Breck group.
Nov: Frozen Disc of Death in Hanover, NH, with M.U.T. gotta keep the win streak going...
My new car (now designated 'Roo') will be racking up the miles, but it should be a good time, provided my job search, GRE studying, and grad school investigations go well. More on that later.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Observation
This thought occurred to me as I was being interviewed by Canadian customs on my way to Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta:
You are at an interesting stage of your life when the questions "where do you live?" and "what do you do for a living?" are difficult questions to answer.
Luckily customs still let me through, albeit after I gave them a short autobiography.
Tonight I'm off to Two Medicine Lake in Glacier National Park, after that it's back to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons followed by Colorado. Hopefully I'll still have money left. Canada was expensive. The exchange rate isn't what it used to be.
You are at an interesting stage of your life when the questions "where do you live?" and "what do you do for a living?" are difficult questions to answer.
Luckily customs still let me through, albeit after I gave them a short autobiography.
Tonight I'm off to Two Medicine Lake in Glacier National Park, after that it's back to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons followed by Colorado. Hopefully I'll still have money left. Canada was expensive. The exchange rate isn't what it used to be.
Monday, September 07, 2009
Tetons
When south again for my 4 day Labor Day weekend, and this time went hiking as opposed to playing ultimate.
No mountain since the Matterhorn has induced such compulsive picture taking as Grand Teton did during my hike on Saturday. I think my total for the day was around 100 photos. I did the Paintbrush Canyon to Cascade Canyon loop from the String Lake trailhead. It's 20 miles and 5,000 vertical feet, and one of the most spectacular hikes I've ever done. I topped it off my scrambling up a small peak next to the pass the trail crosses to I can that I've been on top of a Teton. I was amazed by the number of other people doing the same day hike too. I figured I'd be the only one nuts enough to do that long of a hike, but apparently the Tetons attract a lot of crazy hikers. I even ran into 3 women doing the entire 35 mile Teton Crest Trail in one day.
No mountain since the Matterhorn has induced such compulsive picture taking as Grand Teton did during my hike on Saturday. I think my total for the day was around 100 photos. I did the Paintbrush Canyon to Cascade Canyon loop from the String Lake trailhead. It's 20 miles and 5,000 vertical feet, and one of the most spectacular hikes I've ever done. I topped it off my scrambling up a small peak next to the pass the trail crosses to I can that I've been on top of a Teton. I was amazed by the number of other people doing the same day hike too. I figured I'd be the only one nuts enough to do that long of a hike, but apparently the Tetons attract a lot of crazy hikers. I even ran into 3 women doing the entire 35 mile Teton Crest Trail in one day.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Jackson Ultimate
This past weekend I played in my second ultimate tournament of the year, in Jackson, WY. Being on the move and working in remote places like I have been this year has really limited my tournament attendance. By this time last year I had already played in 12. But what I'm lacking in quantity this year I'm making up for in quality.
My first tournament was Poultry Days back in June in between working at Guadalupe Mountains and Yellowstone. Tyke got me onto a Madison team and it was simply awesome. Great food, camping at the fields, watching team USA vs. team Canada, and as always throwing numerous hucks to Tyke that appear to be ill advised but almost always work because we know each other that well. The over-arching highlight of the weekend was the realization that I am a good ultimate player. I hadn't played competitive ultimate since club regionals last October, but I more than held my own playing on a good team against good competition. I know I'm not elite open club good, but I'm good enough to know I can play, and play relatively well, at about any other level, which is nice.
The Jackson tournament was my introduction into yet another regional ultimate culture, this time ultimate in the Rockies. The tournament was attended by teams from Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, and Idaho and was a mix of competitive mixed teams trying to make nationals and teams formed by local pick up scenes that wanted to attend a tournament. From what I can tell the attitude at mountainous tourney locations such as this is much more about traveling to a sweet place, hanging out, and partying than playing serious ultimate, which is fine. All I wanted to do was have fun anyway.
The team I was playing with, a combo group out of Bozeman and Missoula, fully embraced this attitude and went all out with a hippie theme complete with giving everyone on the team hippie names such as Dandelion Dream, Lunar Moon Unit, Sundried Tomato, Prius Herbgarden, River Sprout, Morning Glory, and Cord of Wood, among others. Mar, who had come up to visit for the weekend, and I were initially skeptical of this theme and it reinforcing stereotypes, especially after the team played it's first few point barefoot. Soon after that though everyone cleated up and we realized they were all pretty good. A few of them had even won mixed nationals last year playing for the Flycoons out of Missoula.
Despite this tournament being less competitive than Poultry Days, I had a much harder time padding the stat sheet here than I did there, which I attribute to the style of play. Poultry Days I played with Madison guys and we were all on the same page offensively, at Jackson I didn't know their system and Mar and I both were constantly being looked off on under cuts, double cutting, or cutting when the thrower wasn't working. It was frustrating at times. The Montana group liked to run a vert stack with 3 handlers and basically handler weave until someone opened up deep. Cuts were called on the line like "we're looking for so and so deep followed by so and so deep", so mention of in cuts or breakside or anything. This made getting the disc rather hard for someone who specializes in in-cuts and breakside flow cuts such myself. Still, I made it work, and by Sunday I was opening my deep game and made some plays. It was also great to play with Mar again, though as always we need to work on our connection. I was 0 for 2 on hucks to her during the weekend. At Poultry Days I was probably 8 for 10 or something when looking to Tyke deep.
Best part of the tournament was probably the party. It was outside at a mexican restaurant/bar and started right after games were over and ran until long after Mar and I left at 10:30. Copious amounts of mexican food, good local beer, a good local band, and good weather. Couldn't really ask for more.
Oh, and we went 3-3 on the weekend.
My first tournament was Poultry Days back in June in between working at Guadalupe Mountains and Yellowstone. Tyke got me onto a Madison team and it was simply awesome. Great food, camping at the fields, watching team USA vs. team Canada, and as always throwing numerous hucks to Tyke that appear to be ill advised but almost always work because we know each other that well. The over-arching highlight of the weekend was the realization that I am a good ultimate player. I hadn't played competitive ultimate since club regionals last October, but I more than held my own playing on a good team against good competition. I know I'm not elite open club good, but I'm good enough to know I can play, and play relatively well, at about any other level, which is nice.
The Jackson tournament was my introduction into yet another regional ultimate culture, this time ultimate in the Rockies. The tournament was attended by teams from Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, and Idaho and was a mix of competitive mixed teams trying to make nationals and teams formed by local pick up scenes that wanted to attend a tournament. From what I can tell the attitude at mountainous tourney locations such as this is much more about traveling to a sweet place, hanging out, and partying than playing serious ultimate, which is fine. All I wanted to do was have fun anyway.
The team I was playing with, a combo group out of Bozeman and Missoula, fully embraced this attitude and went all out with a hippie theme complete with giving everyone on the team hippie names such as Dandelion Dream, Lunar Moon Unit, Sundried Tomato, Prius Herbgarden, River Sprout, Morning Glory, and Cord of Wood, among others. Mar, who had come up to visit for the weekend, and I were initially skeptical of this theme and it reinforcing stereotypes, especially after the team played it's first few point barefoot. Soon after that though everyone cleated up and we realized they were all pretty good. A few of them had even won mixed nationals last year playing for the Flycoons out of Missoula.
Despite this tournament being less competitive than Poultry Days, I had a much harder time padding the stat sheet here than I did there, which I attribute to the style of play. Poultry Days I played with Madison guys and we were all on the same page offensively, at Jackson I didn't know their system and Mar and I both were constantly being looked off on under cuts, double cutting, or cutting when the thrower wasn't working. It was frustrating at times. The Montana group liked to run a vert stack with 3 handlers and basically handler weave until someone opened up deep. Cuts were called on the line like "we're looking for so and so deep followed by so and so deep", so mention of in cuts or breakside or anything. This made getting the disc rather hard for someone who specializes in in-cuts and breakside flow cuts such myself. Still, I made it work, and by Sunday I was opening my deep game and made some plays. It was also great to play with Mar again, though as always we need to work on our connection. I was 0 for 2 on hucks to her during the weekend. At Poultry Days I was probably 8 for 10 or something when looking to Tyke deep.
Best part of the tournament was probably the party. It was outside at a mexican restaurant/bar and started right after games were over and ran until long after Mar and I left at 10:30. Copious amounts of mexican food, good local beer, a good local band, and good weather. Couldn't really ask for more.
Oh, and we went 3-3 on the weekend.
Monday, July 27, 2009
July
July is going by fast too...
As opposed to my time in Guadalupe, my time here is rather structured and doesn't lend itself as easily to themes for posts. I'm going to wait a little longer before I write a 'living in Yellowstone' post, but in the meantime here are the highlights from the past few weeks.
-I am now fully involved in two different projects here, one using GIS and ENVI and another using matlab and infrared imagery. Both are interesting topics and actually have the potential to be journal articles, or at least GSA abstracts, according to my supervisors.
-Work is very reminiscent of grad school. I share a small, windowless office with 2 other geocorps volunteers and spend most of my days indoors working on my projects. It's a little frustrating being stuck inside all week when I'm working at Yellowstone, but I still have the weekends and occasional side projects to get outside and see the park.
-My parents visited two weekends ago and we had amazing luck viewing animals: wolf, coyote, elk, bison, and grizzly bear all in one day. I also enjoyed the 4 evenings of free good meals
-This past weekend I went to Maine for Zargham's wedding. It was great to be back in New England and see a bunch of my friends. I also got to hang out in Boston for two nights and see other friends who weren't at the wedding. Every time I go back I always get homesick to a degree, I realize how lucky I am to have such an amazing group of friends and I wish I could spend more time with them out east. But soon enough I'll remember I live in Yellowstone and realize life isn't so bad out here. Especially I can convince some people to visit.
Coming up in the next few weeks I'm looking forward to continuing my exploration of the park towards the canyon and west thumb areas. There's still so much I haven't see here, I'm beginning to think I may not even complete even my short list of 'must do's'.
As opposed to my time in Guadalupe, my time here is rather structured and doesn't lend itself as easily to themes for posts. I'm going to wait a little longer before I write a 'living in Yellowstone' post, but in the meantime here are the highlights from the past few weeks.
-I am now fully involved in two different projects here, one using GIS and ENVI and another using matlab and infrared imagery. Both are interesting topics and actually have the potential to be journal articles, or at least GSA abstracts, according to my supervisors.
-Work is very reminiscent of grad school. I share a small, windowless office with 2 other geocorps volunteers and spend most of my days indoors working on my projects. It's a little frustrating being stuck inside all week when I'm working at Yellowstone, but I still have the weekends and occasional side projects to get outside and see the park.
-My parents visited two weekends ago and we had amazing luck viewing animals: wolf, coyote, elk, bison, and grizzly bear all in one day. I also enjoyed the 4 evenings of free good meals
-This past weekend I went to Maine for Zargham's wedding. It was great to be back in New England and see a bunch of my friends. I also got to hang out in Boston for two nights and see other friends who weren't at the wedding. Every time I go back I always get homesick to a degree, I realize how lucky I am to have such an amazing group of friends and I wish I could spend more time with them out east. But soon enough I'll remember I live in Yellowstone and realize life isn't so bad out here. Especially I can convince some people to visit.
Coming up in the next few weeks I'm looking forward to continuing my exploration of the park towards the canyon and west thumb areas. There's still so much I haven't see here, I'm beginning to think I may not even complete even my short list of 'must do's'.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Enjoying the Simple Things
Two weeks into living at Yellowstone and I'm already a bit jaded.
"It's just a *(&^*!$ buffalo! There's no reason to park your car in the middle of &*^! the road on a &*^!@# holiday weekend so your wife can get that perfect photo! You're going to see 100 more of the $%^!&* things today!"
So while I the above quote is a very common thought as I drive through the park, I am making special note of the little things that make me very happy, and make me realize that I am lucky to be able to live and work here. Things such as:
-getting out on the trails and being the only person to see a mother elk prodding her calf up a hill into the cover of the forest.
-driving in the rain through the mountains. Especially I have Michael Franti playing on my iPod.
-Barreling downhill on my mountain bike, going 2.6 miles in 15 minutes, to emerge at the trail head 50 feet from my house and getting inside just before the daily thunderstorm hits.
-Getting to wear chest-high waders and play in a lake for an afternoon and call it 'field work'.
-The fact that when you're doing field work near sulfur vents, you can fart as much as you want and no one will notice.
"It's just a *(&^*!$ buffalo! There's no reason to park your car in the middle of &*^! the road on a &*^!@# holiday weekend so your wife can get that perfect photo! You're going to see 100 more of the $%^!&* things today!"
So while I the above quote is a very common thought as I drive through the park, I am making special note of the little things that make me very happy, and make me realize that I am lucky to be able to live and work here. Things such as:
-getting out on the trails and being the only person to see a mother elk prodding her calf up a hill into the cover of the forest.
-driving in the rain through the mountains. Especially I have Michael Franti playing on my iPod.
-Barreling downhill on my mountain bike, going 2.6 miles in 15 minutes, to emerge at the trail head 50 feet from my house and getting inside just before the daily thunderstorm hits.
-Getting to wear chest-high waders and play in a lake for an afternoon and call it 'field work'.
-The fact that when you're doing field work near sulfur vents, you can fart as much as you want and no one will notice.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Yellowstone
June is going by fast...
I'm in Yellowstone now, and am enjoying my first weekend off after my first week of work. My schedule is pretty cool, we work 9 hours days but then get every other Friday off, so I'm looking forward to having all that time to explore the park. I've spent my evenings so far pouring over maps and 12 weekends isn't even going to make a very large dent in the amount of things one can do here. This place is huge.
I'll write more about my job when I actually know what I'm doing, I'm still getting introduced and feeling out my projects. I did get to go on a couple field assignments this past week, which was fun. We were mapping some lake and stream features with a GPS, though the tourists kept asking us if we were tracking wolves. This park was set aside for the thermal features, but has really become much more of a wildlife park I feel. And the wildlife doesn't disappoint either. In my first week here I've seen Moose, Bison, Elk, Black Bear, Coyote, Badger, Osprey, Big Horn Sheep, and Sand Hill Cranes.
I had a great drive to get up here too. Stopped by a couple NPS sites in OK and NE and otherwise got accustomed to driving my new Subaru. More posts to come as I get more settled, this is going to be a great summer.
I'm in Yellowstone now, and am enjoying my first weekend off after my first week of work. My schedule is pretty cool, we work 9 hours days but then get every other Friday off, so I'm looking forward to having all that time to explore the park. I've spent my evenings so far pouring over maps and 12 weekends isn't even going to make a very large dent in the amount of things one can do here. This place is huge.
I'll write more about my job when I actually know what I'm doing, I'm still getting introduced and feeling out my projects. I did get to go on a couple field assignments this past week, which was fun. We were mapping some lake and stream features with a GPS, though the tourists kept asking us if we were tracking wolves. This park was set aside for the thermal features, but has really become much more of a wildlife park I feel. And the wildlife doesn't disappoint either. In my first week here I've seen Moose, Bison, Elk, Black Bear, Coyote, Badger, Osprey, Big Horn Sheep, and Sand Hill Cranes.
I had a great drive to get up here too. Stopped by a couple NPS sites in OK and NE and otherwise got accustomed to driving my new Subaru. More posts to come as I get more settled, this is going to be a great summer.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The Jeep is Dead. Long live The Jeep.
I knew this day would come. I knew it was getting closer and closer with every mile I drove, but the inevitability of the Jeep's demise did nothing to stop me from becoming more and more attached each time I loaded it up, ready to set off on our next adventure. If it is possible to love an inanimate object, I loved The Jeep. That vehicle was as much a part of my college experience as any building at Dartmouth, or any dorm or apartment I've ever lived in. It was the perfect car at the perfect time, and I will miss it dearly.
This past winter the Jeep had a terrible time starting in the cold and altitude of Colorado. There's a chance I might be in Colorado this coming winter, and I knew the Jeep didn't have another cold season in it. The Jeep would not see 2010. This put the cost of repairs for it on a very short leash. This past week at its latest oil change the inspection turned up $500 worth of fluid flushes and leak fixes, and that was enough. The Blue Book value on the Jeep is about $800. I took it for a drive on Wednesday to get it over 190,000 miles, and then my mom and I traded it in for a new Subaru Forester. The Jeep was 15 years, 8 months old. Old enough to drive itself under adult supervision.
The Jeep was born in Colorado in 1993. It had an exciting early life with numerous trips to ski areas, off-roading in the Great Sand Dunes, and road trips to the Dakotas and Pacific Northwest. It spent the years 1994-2003 primarily in Oklahoma as a commuter vehicle, escaping briefly a few times a year on road trips to Colorado and New Mexico. In 2001 I learned how to drive in it. In 2002 I became the primary driver of the Jeep, and drove it to school every day of my Junior and Senior years of high school. It allowed me to commute to the other high school in town to take a class not offered at my school, and was often taken to lunch since it could hold 5 people a lot more comfortably than my best friend's Civic.
The Jeep surpassed 100,000 miles in September 2003 as my Mom and I drove up for my freshman year at Dartmouth. Sophomore year I took sole possession of the Jeep. The Jeep almost met its end in April 2005, but I convinced my mom to fix the transmission for 3 grand as opposed to buying me a new car. My sophomore, junior, and senior year at Dartmouth the Jeep attended nearly every tournament with Dartmouth Ultimate. It went on spring break. It hauled a pong table. It moved nearly the entire capacity of 311 Mid Mass in one trip. 
It drove between Oklahoma and Dartmouth 10 times while I was an undergrad. It carried me through snow covered roads on the way to Killington, Stowe, and the Dartmouth Skiway. It took me down to Boston to visit Tyke God only knows how many times. The Jeep could hold all the food, cones, and other supplies necessary to host a frisbee tournament for 30 teams. I'm willing to bet 4 out of 5 people who see this post have ridden in the Jeep for at least a few hours. The Jeep moved with me to Wisconsin.
It went over 150,000 miles in Madison in June 2007, and quickly became legend amongst the Pimpdags, especially those who spent 2 hours in it sitting in the parking lot of a porn shop in the middle of nowhere when the serpentine belt broke on Spring Break. It did the most serious off-roading of its life on the Como Road in August 2008 in Colorado. The Jeep spent its last weeks residing in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, before embarking on its last road trip ever to bring me back to Oklahoma. In its life the Jeep made it to 43 of the states in this country, and reached the highest point in 6 of them.
And the Jeep's life is not necessarily over. The Subaru dealer will sell it to a smaller auto shop, where it will be either scrapped for parts or sold to a new owner. My hope is that someone sees the Jeep as I have seen it, and it gets to live out the rest of its days on a ranch, or helping a teenager learn how to drive and maintain a car, or I can only hope, somewhere, anywhere, where it can face the west, the orange light of sunset glinting of its red hood, and imagine the mountains that must lie just past the horizon.The Jeep is dead. Long live the Jeep. R.I.P. October 1993 - June 2009.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
The Five Coolest Things I Saw in the Guadalupe Mountains
My internship at GUMO is now over. I departed in glorious fashion, giving my geology patio talk to 4 people at the visitor center in my last half hour work. One of the interp rangers asked me as I was leaving that day if it felt anticlimactic, but actually, thanks to that presentation, and how smoothly it went compared to the first time I gave it, my end felt quite climactic and conclusive.
I have some time at home now, so I'll write a couple wrap-up posts before heading off to Yellowstone next week. Today, the subject is the coolest things I saw, by which I mean singular moments, not certain sights.
#5: On my 17 mile hike of Bush Mountain I stumbled upon 2 Barbary Sheep. Barbary Sheep are similar to Big Horn Sheep, but are actually from Africa and were imported for hunting in the early 20th century after the native Big Horn went extinct in this region. The on-alert pose for a Barbary Sheep is a classic, majestic, thrusting out of the chest with the head held high, but I couldn't get a picture of it because they quickly dashed off into the oak thickets near Bush Mountain before I could get my camera out.
#4: While hiking the Bowl one weekend I saw my
first and so far only rattlesnake, a black-tailed rattlesnake to be exact. It was sitting on a stump next to the trail and saw me first and started rattling. I had never heard that sound before, but anyone would know that sound when they heard it. I jumped a couple feet in the air and quickly backed off to a safe distance. The snake still thought I was too close though, and kept rattling and sitting a striking posture, allowing me to get a great picture from about 10 feet away.
#3: One day the park fire crew decided to do a prescribed burn in the park along the ridge next to the highway. I was off that day and was returning from Carlsbad at night when I saw the mountains glowing with flame in the darkness. It was an eirie sight to see the park on fire as I stood outside my house. Apparently the burn took a little longer to put out than was predicted. My friend in the fire crew said she worked 16 hours straight that day.
#2: On the night of the full moon in May one of the park employees had her annual mother's day bash at her ranch house near Dell City, TX.
I stayed there until 1 am and ate 4 plates of the best BBQ brisket ever while meeting the locals and watching the moon rise over the western escarpment cliffs. I got back to the park at 2:30 and managed to sustain the will power to take a one hour nap before getting up and setting off on the Guadalupe Peak trail at 4am under the full moon. I summitted just before 6 am, in time to see the run rise from the highest point in Texas. I took about 40 pictures in 15 minutes before taking a 2 hour nap. All in all I had the top to myself for 4 hours.
#1: In mid May we had an abnormal
amount of rain for 3 days straight. That was enough to flood McKittrick canyon for 2 days. The waters washed away entirely one of the steam crossings on the canyon trail, which was closed for 3 days. It was spectacular seeing the stream full of water after hiking it when it was dry so many times. Talking to the rangers who have been in the park for a decade or more, flooding of this extent only happens once every 3-4 years.
I have some time at home now, so I'll write a couple wrap-up posts before heading off to Yellowstone next week. Today, the subject is the coolest things I saw, by which I mean singular moments, not certain sights.
#5: On my 17 mile hike of Bush Mountain I stumbled upon 2 Barbary Sheep. Barbary Sheep are similar to Big Horn Sheep, but are actually from Africa and were imported for hunting in the early 20th century after the native Big Horn went extinct in this region. The on-alert pose for a Barbary Sheep is a classic, majestic, thrusting out of the chest with the head held high, but I couldn't get a picture of it because they quickly dashed off into the oak thickets near Bush Mountain before I could get my camera out.
#4: While hiking the Bowl one weekend I saw my
first and so far only rattlesnake, a black-tailed rattlesnake to be exact. It was sitting on a stump next to the trail and saw me first and started rattling. I had never heard that sound before, but anyone would know that sound when they heard it. I jumped a couple feet in the air and quickly backed off to a safe distance. The snake still thought I was too close though, and kept rattling and sitting a striking posture, allowing me to get a great picture from about 10 feet away.#3: One day the park fire crew decided to do a prescribed burn in the park along the ridge next to the highway. I was off that day and was returning from Carlsbad at night when I saw the mountains glowing with flame in the darkness. It was an eirie sight to see the park on fire as I stood outside my house. Apparently the burn took a little longer to put out than was predicted. My friend in the fire crew said she worked 16 hours straight that day.
#2: On the night of the full moon in May one of the park employees had her annual mother's day bash at her ranch house near Dell City, TX.
I stayed there until 1 am and ate 4 plates of the best BBQ brisket ever while meeting the locals and watching the moon rise over the western escarpment cliffs. I got back to the park at 2:30 and managed to sustain the will power to take a one hour nap before getting up and setting off on the Guadalupe Peak trail at 4am under the full moon. I summitted just before 6 am, in time to see the run rise from the highest point in Texas. I took about 40 pictures in 15 minutes before taking a 2 hour nap. All in all I had the top to myself for 4 hours.#1: In mid May we had an abnormal
amount of rain for 3 days straight. That was enough to flood McKittrick canyon for 2 days. The waters washed away entirely one of the steam crossings on the canyon trail, which was closed for 3 days. It was spectacular seeing the stream full of water after hiking it when it was dry so many times. Talking to the rangers who have been in the park for a decade or more, flooding of this extent only happens once every 3-4 years.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
White Sands
The rapidly decreasing length of my internship (only 2 1/2 more weeks!) has encouraged me to focus on checking off the cool sites near here that I want to see before I leave. Granted, this 'weekend' (i.e. today and tomorrow, my days off) I'm hanging around GUMO and Carlsbad and catching up on sleep, but last weekend I went on a mini overnight adventure to White Sands National Monument.
I started my weekend on Wednesday, leaving GUMO around 9 and stopping in Carlsbad to replace my Camelbak mouthpiece (a mouse has chewed through my old one a week earlier). After that it was on to Cloudcroft, NM and the Sacramento Ranger District of the Lincoln National Forest. This was a really cool place. The forest here is higher than at Guadalupe and much thicker and larger, with no remnants of desert plants like Yucca or Agava like you see in the Bowl at GUMO. It was also about 15 degrees cooler than the desert, which was nice.
I stopped by the Bluff Springs waterfall, Sunspot Observatory, Osha Trail, and discovered the Trestle Rec Area at dusk, which was unfortunate because that was probably the coolest place I found, and I didn't have near enough time to explore it. I ended up running the 2.5 mile trail to see the old railroad trestle to beat the darkness and catch sunset at the overlook near the parking area.
After that I had a great dinner and proceded to a national forest campground to spend my first ever night camping by myself. It could've gone better probably. Given my wild imagination I quickly spooked myself in the darkness and spent maybe 30 minutes sitting next to the Jeep drinking a beer before diving into my tent and falling asleep as quickly as I could.
Hearing Elk snorting nearby didn't help my situation, as I quickly tried to think of what mood a bear would have to be in to make that sound. My stupid mind settled on 'starving'.
The next day I got up early and drove out of the mountains down into the Tularosa valley and White Sands National Monument. I met their resident SCA intern and then headed out into the dunes on the 4.6 Alkali Flats trail.
If you ever go there, definitely hike this trail, but use sunscreen on all exposed skin. The sunlight reflecting of the white sand makes the sun exposure like skiing without all the protective clothes. I scorched my shins. The Jeep and I also enjoyed driving on the unpaved, compacted sand roads.
My next stop was a spontaneous decision to visit the White Sands Missile Range headquarters. The museum had some cool displays and artifacts, but this place is still and active testing ground so there were some interesting restrictions on taking photos. I could take photos outside, which surprised me actually, but I could only take them of the missiles on display while I was facing West.
I kept looking around for the army private who would tackle me if I turned towards the East, but I didn't see him. I also was not allowed to take photos of any part of the base besides the missile park and was especially not allowed to take photos of the entrance.
The adventure continues as I drove down to El Paso, arriving around dusk to explore the roads around and within the Franklin Mountains. I got some pretty good views, and then decided to drive through downtown where I proceeded to get slightly lost and come closer than I wanted to accidentally going to Mexico. Though I breifly considered purposely going to Mexico when I saw a stadium full of red-clad fans watching a soccer game just across the Rio Grande in Juarez. Thoughts of swine flu and the recent drug wars quickly pushed that idea from my mind though.
I spent enough time wandering around El Paso that I drove the 90 minutes back to GUMO in the dark. My sunset views of the western escarpment will have to wait until another day I suppose.
I started my weekend on Wednesday, leaving GUMO around 9 and stopping in Carlsbad to replace my Camelbak mouthpiece (a mouse has chewed through my old one a week earlier). After that it was on to Cloudcroft, NM and the Sacramento Ranger District of the Lincoln National Forest. This was a really cool place. The forest here is higher than at Guadalupe and much thicker and larger, with no remnants of desert plants like Yucca or Agava like you see in the Bowl at GUMO. It was also about 15 degrees cooler than the desert, which was nice.
I stopped by the Bluff Springs waterfall, Sunspot Observatory, Osha Trail, and discovered the Trestle Rec Area at dusk, which was unfortunate because that was probably the coolest place I found, and I didn't have near enough time to explore it. I ended up running the 2.5 mile trail to see the old railroad trestle to beat the darkness and catch sunset at the overlook near the parking area.After that I had a great dinner and proceded to a national forest campground to spend my first ever night camping by myself. It could've gone better probably. Given my wild imagination I quickly spooked myself in the darkness and spent maybe 30 minutes sitting next to the Jeep drinking a beer before diving into my tent and falling asleep as quickly as I could.
Hearing Elk snorting nearby didn't help my situation, as I quickly tried to think of what mood a bear would have to be in to make that sound. My stupid mind settled on 'starving'.The next day I got up early and drove out of the mountains down into the Tularosa valley and White Sands National Monument. I met their resident SCA intern and then headed out into the dunes on the 4.6 Alkali Flats trail.
If you ever go there, definitely hike this trail, but use sunscreen on all exposed skin. The sunlight reflecting of the white sand makes the sun exposure like skiing without all the protective clothes. I scorched my shins. The Jeep and I also enjoyed driving on the unpaved, compacted sand roads.My next stop was a spontaneous decision to visit the White Sands Missile Range headquarters. The museum had some cool displays and artifacts, but this place is still and active testing ground so there were some interesting restrictions on taking photos. I could take photos outside, which surprised me actually, but I could only take them of the missiles on display while I was facing West.
I kept looking around for the army private who would tackle me if I turned towards the East, but I didn't see him. I also was not allowed to take photos of any part of the base besides the missile park and was especially not allowed to take photos of the entrance.The adventure continues as I drove down to El Paso, arriving around dusk to explore the roads around and within the Franklin Mountains. I got some pretty good views, and then decided to drive through downtown where I proceeded to get slightly lost and come closer than I wanted to accidentally going to Mexico. Though I breifly considered purposely going to Mexico when I saw a stadium full of red-clad fans watching a soccer game just across the Rio Grande in Juarez. Thoughts of swine flu and the recent drug wars quickly pushed that idea from my mind though.
I spent enough time wandering around El Paso that I drove the 90 minutes back to GUMO in the dark. My sunset views of the western escarpment will have to wait until another day I suppose.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Hey, Where'd Everyone Go?
I'll revisit the community of people I live with this week. It's been nearly a month since I first wrote about my seasonal housing mates and I'm happy to remote that as we got to know each better, initial judgments and prejudices were forgotten. Now I just have to learn not to judge people immediately, and potentially not to judge people until I've talked with them multiple times, I'd expect the same of other people trying to get to know me. The more I talked to people here the more interesting they became. I found out a couple of my 10 person social circle went used one of their days off every week to go to Van Horn and take an EMT class. Others have worked at GUMO for years and have a lot of interesting stories, like the Law Enforcement officer who once caught a Brown Pelican in the park. It had been blown here from California by especially strong winds. I also found out a couple of them lived in Carlsbad most of the time, further shrinking my park housing social network.
Unfortunately, as soon as I got to know everyone better, a wave of people left. And by wave of people I mean 3. But 3 is a lot when you're starting with 10. The most recent 2 to leave were a couple who headed to Montana a couple week ago. The guy was my housemate, so they were always in our house cooking or hanging out. With them gone I pretty much have the place to myself. My other housemate hangs out with a good friend of his the whole time. Their departure felt like more than 2 people though. They had been at GUMO a while, so knew everyone well, and were well liked. People would come over and hang out with them, and social gatherings of 4-6 people were pretty common. With them gone those people don't come over anymore. My group of friends that I could potentially hang out with on a given night is now down to 2, and while its nice to have so much space in my house to myself, it feels lonely sometimes. Also not helping is that when my housemate departed, he took with him his collection of DVDs. Evening entertainment has since been limited to reading, and possibly studying for Yellowstone or writing the journal article on my Dartmouth senior thesis. The satellite TV is still around of course, so maybe I'll become interested in the NBA playoffs at some point soon.
On the other hand, I'm getting to know those 2 remaining people very well, and talk to them most nights for at least an hour or so, which is fun. More people should be arriving this month, but then I'll be leaving soon after that. Things are settling into a routine a little bit, but that's not a bad thing, especially when that routine involves hiking in a national park most days and playing basketball every day after work while the sun sets over the mountains.
Unfortunately, as soon as I got to know everyone better, a wave of people left. And by wave of people I mean 3. But 3 is a lot when you're starting with 10. The most recent 2 to leave were a couple who headed to Montana a couple week ago. The guy was my housemate, so they were always in our house cooking or hanging out. With them gone I pretty much have the place to myself. My other housemate hangs out with a good friend of his the whole time. Their departure felt like more than 2 people though. They had been at GUMO a while, so knew everyone well, and were well liked. People would come over and hang out with them, and social gatherings of 4-6 people were pretty common. With them gone those people don't come over anymore. My group of friends that I could potentially hang out with on a given night is now down to 2, and while its nice to have so much space in my house to myself, it feels lonely sometimes. Also not helping is that when my housemate departed, he took with him his collection of DVDs. Evening entertainment has since been limited to reading, and possibly studying for Yellowstone or writing the journal article on my Dartmouth senior thesis. The satellite TV is still around of course, so maybe I'll become interested in the NBA playoffs at some point soon.
On the other hand, I'm getting to know those 2 remaining people very well, and talk to them most nights for at least an hour or so, which is fun. More people should be arriving this month, but then I'll be leaving soon after that. Things are settling into a routine a little bit, but that's not a bad thing, especially when that routine involves hiking in a national park most days and playing basketball every day after work while the sun sets over the mountains.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
The Cave
One of the more interesting things I've slowly been noticing since I arrived here is the relationship between Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Carlsbad Caverns Nationals Park, known to each other in NPS shorthand as GUMO and CAVE (technically NPS shorthand dictates that the first two letters of the first two words in the park name be used, i.e. ROMO for Rocky Mountain, but they made an exception for the caverns, which would've been stuck with CACA, which is ironic given the amount of bat guano in the cave).
The two parks share a non-profit and probably 25-50% of their visitors. While working in the VC at GUMO, I often find myself related cave tour info and opperating hours to visitors stopping in on their way to the caverns, which is the destination park for tourists in the area. People on vacation to the region usually allow a day for each, and come down to GUMO to bag Guadalupe Peak (which I've decided is the most popular trail in the park, surpassing even our .4 mile paved nature trail).
In playing ultimate and going on a special employee only cave tour one night I've talked with quite a few people who do my job (interpretation) at the cave, and I've come to the conclusion that I am so glad that I work at GUMO and not the cave. The cave people (ha!) are stuck underground out of the sunlight all day, generally walking the same 3 miles of paved trails through the natural entrance and big room every day over and over again. I still haven't been on half of miles of trail that Guadalupe has, and I bet even the spectacular formations of the cave get stale after a while.
The cave rangers also have to deal with a ton more people. Carlsbad Caverns is rightly a destination national park, offering sights found nowhere else in the world. Compared to the cave, the Guadalupe Mountains are just that, mountains, and there's plenty of those around. I'm glad most of the tourists stick to the cave, I love my job at GUMO, but I couldn't do it at the cave. I can't really see myself leading tours of 50+ people every day. I'm just not that friendly, and frankly, I'm a little weird, I cringe at the thought of knowing that the little jokes I'd try to insert into cave tours to primarily entertain myself would likely bomb horribly, creating terribly awkward situations. I'll stick to talking to 1-4 people at a time on the trails or behind the VC desk at GUMO.
I'm also glad I don't have to deal with the volume of stupid tourist questions that rangers at the cave deal with. The worst I get is the indignant look of frustrated surprise that people give me when I tell them that no, you can't drive to the top of Guadalupe Peak. Some of the ones cave rangers get asked include "what time do you open the gates to let the bats out?", "do you plan on expanding the cave at any point?", and the comment "thanks for air conditioning the cave, it's really hot out today". I think I'd snap having to deal with that.
Of course, the cave rangers do have their perks. The constant 56 degree temperature in the cave makes for comfy work environment during the 100 degree summers here. Come late May I might just have changed my opinion on working in the cave. The rangers there also get to apply for special use permits for the many caves in the park, and they're allowed to invite their friends along. I was lucky enough to be included on one of those tours a couple weeks ago when 7 of us when down the natural entrance at dusk while the bat flew out to go visit Hall of the White Giant. To get to the hall requires about 45 minutes of crawling, squeezing, and climbing through passages that start right off the natural entrance trail, through you wouldn't know it was there. The hall itself contains a 20 foot stalagmite (the White Giant) and a ton of soda straw formations. We couldn't continue on, but if you did, the second largest chamber in the park, the Guadalupe room, is further down some more narrow passages. The park only lets 8 visitors a week sign up for this tour, so I felt lucky to get to see it, especially with park personnel on their off time.
A week ago I went to the cave to take advantage the free entry I receive thanks to my GUMO employment and see the main sights for the first time as a geologist (I had previously visited in 2001). Pictures included below.
The Bashful Elephant, on the Kings Palace tour
The Big Room from the far end
The Hall of Giants
The two parks share a non-profit and probably 25-50% of their visitors. While working in the VC at GUMO, I often find myself related cave tour info and opperating hours to visitors stopping in on their way to the caverns, which is the destination park for tourists in the area. People on vacation to the region usually allow a day for each, and come down to GUMO to bag Guadalupe Peak (which I've decided is the most popular trail in the park, surpassing even our .4 mile paved nature trail).
In playing ultimate and going on a special employee only cave tour one night I've talked with quite a few people who do my job (interpretation) at the cave, and I've come to the conclusion that I am so glad that I work at GUMO and not the cave. The cave people (ha!) are stuck underground out of the sunlight all day, generally walking the same 3 miles of paved trails through the natural entrance and big room every day over and over again. I still haven't been on half of miles of trail that Guadalupe has, and I bet even the spectacular formations of the cave get stale after a while.
The cave rangers also have to deal with a ton more people. Carlsbad Caverns is rightly a destination national park, offering sights found nowhere else in the world. Compared to the cave, the Guadalupe Mountains are just that, mountains, and there's plenty of those around. I'm glad most of the tourists stick to the cave, I love my job at GUMO, but I couldn't do it at the cave. I can't really see myself leading tours of 50+ people every day. I'm just not that friendly, and frankly, I'm a little weird, I cringe at the thought of knowing that the little jokes I'd try to insert into cave tours to primarily entertain myself would likely bomb horribly, creating terribly awkward situations. I'll stick to talking to 1-4 people at a time on the trails or behind the VC desk at GUMO.
I'm also glad I don't have to deal with the volume of stupid tourist questions that rangers at the cave deal with. The worst I get is the indignant look of frustrated surprise that people give me when I tell them that no, you can't drive to the top of Guadalupe Peak. Some of the ones cave rangers get asked include "what time do you open the gates to let the bats out?", "do you plan on expanding the cave at any point?", and the comment "thanks for air conditioning the cave, it's really hot out today". I think I'd snap having to deal with that.
Of course, the cave rangers do have their perks. The constant 56 degree temperature in the cave makes for comfy work environment during the 100 degree summers here. Come late May I might just have changed my opinion on working in the cave. The rangers there also get to apply for special use permits for the many caves in the park, and they're allowed to invite their friends along. I was lucky enough to be included on one of those tours a couple weeks ago when 7 of us when down the natural entrance at dusk while the bat flew out to go visit Hall of the White Giant. To get to the hall requires about 45 minutes of crawling, squeezing, and climbing through passages that start right off the natural entrance trail, through you wouldn't know it was there. The hall itself contains a 20 foot stalagmite (the White Giant) and a ton of soda straw formations. We couldn't continue on, but if you did, the second largest chamber in the park, the Guadalupe room, is further down some more narrow passages. The park only lets 8 visitors a week sign up for this tour, so I felt lucky to get to see it, especially with park personnel on their off time.
A week ago I went to the cave to take advantage the free entry I receive thanks to my GUMO employment and see the main sights for the first time as a geologist (I had previously visited in 2001). Pictures included below.
The Bashful Elephant, on the Kings Palace tour
The Big Room from the far end
The Hall of Giants
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
NPS Sports
Despite living in the middle of nowhere I have been able to continue my participation in team sports here. When I arrived I was relieved to see a basketball hoop in the parking lot by the seasonal housing, a way to get some exercise without having to run laps on the access road. I go out there and shoot around pretty much every day, sometimes for up to an hour. Most of the time it's so windy I have to aim 5 feet to the right of the basket to have a prayer of making the shot, but shooting around it more about the time I spend out there than my shooting percentage. It's a great way to relax after a days work, though it's not like I need to de-stress or anything given all I do is hike and talk.
In any case, I was shooting around enough I got my jumper back. I found this out while playing 2v2 against some guys on the fire crew last week. For the first time in 4-5 years I was able to break down a guy off the dribble, and pull up and make a shot. And the fire crew guys were decent too, it's not like I was schooling chumps. Now the fire crew is trying to put together a team to go and challenge the best 5 Carlsbad Caverns has to offer. I'm looking forward to that game.
Speaking of schooling chumps though, I've also found a pick-up frisbee game. It's Park service employees only, and we play once a week in Carlsbad. I'm usually the only one who drives all the way from GUMO, but I've had company a couple times. It's by far the lowest quality pick up I've ever played. There's no stall count, no real understanding of the rules (tons of picks, no calls), and turnovers are so prevalent that playing 4v5 isn't looked at as a disadvantage. No one aside from me has a forehand or has played organized ultimate. I'm like Blake Griffin playing against a highschoolers. Despite all that though, I love it. It makes my week. Something about playing the sport of ultimate just washes away any bad or troubling thoughts and lets me simply run around and have fun. Plus as always the people who play are really cool, and it's great to get to know people outside of my 10 person social network at GUMO. Cave people and the cave itself are all very interesting, but that's the subject of another post.
In any case, I was shooting around enough I got my jumper back. I found this out while playing 2v2 against some guys on the fire crew last week. For the first time in 4-5 years I was able to break down a guy off the dribble, and pull up and make a shot. And the fire crew guys were decent too, it's not like I was schooling chumps. Now the fire crew is trying to put together a team to go and challenge the best 5 Carlsbad Caverns has to offer. I'm looking forward to that game.
Speaking of schooling chumps though, I've also found a pick-up frisbee game. It's Park service employees only, and we play once a week in Carlsbad. I'm usually the only one who drives all the way from GUMO, but I've had company a couple times. It's by far the lowest quality pick up I've ever played. There's no stall count, no real understanding of the rules (tons of picks, no calls), and turnovers are so prevalent that playing 4v5 isn't looked at as a disadvantage. No one aside from me has a forehand or has played organized ultimate. I'm like Blake Griffin playing against a highschoolers. Despite all that though, I love it. It makes my week. Something about playing the sport of ultimate just washes away any bad or troubling thoughts and lets me simply run around and have fun. Plus as always the people who play are really cool, and it's great to get to know people outside of my 10 person social network at GUMO. Cave people and the cave itself are all very interesting, but that's the subject of another post.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Home Sweet Government Home
The Jeep, my house (my room is in the near corner), and the rest of the seasonal housing complex.
My basketball court with a view. I probably shoot around here, ignoring the 50 mph winds, at least 5 days a week for some exercise and what's turning into some highly-valued me time.
It's been an exciting week here at the Guadalupe Mountains. One of my favorite perks of being an employee (technically volunteer intern, but same difference) here is getting to carry a radio around when I go hiking. The park is so small that all the divisions (interp, maintainence, law enforcement, fire) use the same radio channel, so I get to hear all the park goings-on. It's like listening to NPR if all they did was sporadically report boring or offbeat news. Here's the week in review:
Tuesday: The park mules get a workout hauling a 300 lb man who broke his ankle down from the high country
Wednesday: A morning wildfire (only 140 acres) gets the park personnel moving early, reports of engine location and fire status fill the radio waves for two hours until the fire is out. The event ends humorously when the GUMO fire engine gets locked inside the ranch where the fire was. Apparently the rancher though having his own personal fire fighters was worth the potential kidnapping accusations.
Thursday: A car flips on the highway near the park, GUMO EMS and law enforcement respond. Interestingly enough the driver of the flipped vehicle is nowhere to be seen. He is eventually found a mile down the road smoking a cigarette.
Friday: A cow gets loose and it takes the entire morning for two LE's (Law Enforcement Rangers) to figure out which ranch it belongs to how to get it back inside the fence.
Saturday: The local highway patrol officer sees fit to stop a car for speeding every 10 minutes, leading to awkward conversations for me while hiking Guadalupe Peak. I would be talking to some people on the trail, and the next thing I know someone's driver's license number and criminal record are being relayed loud and clear from my backpack. Probably not information for the public domain, but, I have to keep the radio on and loud enough so I can hear it should someone try to contact me, so there's not much I can do.
Sunday: A report comes in of an unconsious woman sitting in a vehicle on the side of the road. After 20 tense minutes of scrambling the local ambulence, it turns out she was just asleep and the 911 caller didn't bother knocking hard enough on the car window to wake her up.
The other great perk of working here is being privy to the key that opens everything. Even as a lowly intern, my one key has opened every gate and building I've tried it on, and I'm apparently welcome to use the key to access somewhere whenever I want. So, if you want an exclusive tour of the park including sights visitors can't access, stop on by and I'll show you. If I'm doing roving interp that day it'll even count as work.
As for the perceived bureaucratic downside to working for the government, I haven't really noticed it. Sure it took maintainance nearly a month to replace the clothes dryer that broke just before I showed up, but it seems the park service in general is a pretty laid back, if not the most laid back, branch of the federal government. I'm also low enough on the totem pole here (i.e. at the bottom) to not have to deal with some of the forms and regulations required of the higher ups that can give them a bad rap.
All in all, I'd recommend the park service, it seems no more uptight than any other workplace I've heard of my friends working at, and while the key to your office lets you access the storage closet, the key to my office gets me into a historic 1930's ranch house in a pristine wilderness canyon.
Monday, April 06, 2009
A Cast of Characters
I've been at Guadalupe Mountains National Park (or GUMO in governmental shorthand) almost 3 weeks now. I continue to love the fact I get to hike for my job about 40% of the time, though now that I'm getting to know the trails, I'm finding myself told to work the desk at the visitor center to answer questions more. Fun fact, if you call up the national park on any day not Monday or Tuesday, there's a decent chance I'll be answering. I work the desk another 40% of my time, with the other 20% spent doing odd jobs for the natural resources division or preparing for a 10 minute park geology presentation I'm supposed to be giving at some point.
In my last post I talked a little about the people I'm sharing the park housing with. This whole park is run by a staff of no more than 40 people, including all maintainance, law enforcement, interpretation, and natural resources personnel. Most of the senior rangers, or anyone with a family really, live in Carlsbad and commute the hour back and forth every day. That leaves the seasonal volunteers and rangers (usually either retired couples or younger single people) in the park housing. I counted the other day and found that within this subset I have a total of 9 potential friends, meaning that, including me, there are only 10 people remotely close to my age who live in park housing. I've met all of them now and get along with them all, thankfully.
On the other hand, none of them are of the long-term friend type for me, and in most cases seem to get along with other people within the 10 person subset better than me. Still, I've had some great conversations with them so far. The park service attracts people from all types of backgrounds, but these people all generally share a common personality type, that type being they are people who love living in a wilderness area a long drive from anything. This personality quirk helps bind an otherwise diverse group together. This subset of 10 includes 6 men and 4 women, I am the 2nd youngest, most are late 20's to mid 30's. There are 2 maintainance, 3 law enforcement, 3 fire, and 2 interpretation (that's me) among us, and our varying schedules (everyone has different sets of days off since the park is always open and busiest on weekends) make hanging out difficult. The lack of activities besides drinking or watching TV also limits the social ability of our group, which can often devolve into rounds of shots of at 10pm because 10pm is a lame time to be going to sleep. I am fine with an occasional night of moderate to heavy drinking, but the frequency with which I have witnessed these boredom-induced nights of shot-taking is beginning to raise my concern that a bigger issue exists among my potential friends. After the last two weeks of introductions and trying to be sociable and friendly, I am going to be having more solitary nights from now on.
The national park service is a great racket for work. I've met some people who work at Carlsbad Caverns as well, and many of the younger seasonal rangers at the two parks have spent their recent lives hopping from park to park, holding temporary positions and working and living in some of the country's most amazing locations. As soon as this possibility of employment occurred to me, I had dreams of ski instructing in the winter and working in the national parks in the summer. Not a bad life at all, and the rangers I've met who are doing it can't say a bad thing about it.
The relative ease of the work, and the workers contentment to simply live in an amazing place, however, has led me to be reintroduced to a type of a person I have not interacted with since high school; the person without a strong career drive or an ambition to succeed or excel at something. These people also work for the government, and view those coworkers with ambition skeptically, as those people are nearly always douchebags who care more about their next job than the one they are doing now. Employment in the government for those who want a raise seems all about by-the-book compliance and brown nosing your way into a higher GS pay grade, and the type of person who loves to live in the wilderness rarely loves living by the book as well, creating a void between senior rangers and seasonal rangers that is easily detected, even in just the 3 weeks I've been here. The downside to this is that my ambitions and life dreams of a Ph.D. and scientific research have rubbed members of our 10 person social herd the wrong way, and I have felt vibes of anti-intellectualism directed my way, or inklings of resentment as they see my masters degree as proof that I think that I'm better than them. And the thing is, there's a part of me that does, a part of me that has always viewed with a certain degree of shame a person whom I thought had no desire to fulfill their potential.
All negatives aside, the people I share my park housing existence with are funny, entertaining, unique, and enjoyable to spend time with a majority of the day. I am learning to simply enjoy the company of other people without judging or comparison, and I hope that they are understanding and forgiving and do the same for me, because I'll admit I can be an asshole sometimes, but I'm working it. I am using this experience to my advantage, and trying to learn from my fellow and older seasonal housing residents what living to one's potential actually means. Or what have a successful life implies and how it can vary not only from person to person but within oneself over time. This is a group of people vastly different from me, but yet with many similar basic desires, and I look forward to continuing to hang out with them. The point of this sabatical from academic work was to see what else is out there, and already just 3 weeks in, I am seeing it, and for the most part, I am enjoying it.
In my last post I talked a little about the people I'm sharing the park housing with. This whole park is run by a staff of no more than 40 people, including all maintainance, law enforcement, interpretation, and natural resources personnel. Most of the senior rangers, or anyone with a family really, live in Carlsbad and commute the hour back and forth every day. That leaves the seasonal volunteers and rangers (usually either retired couples or younger single people) in the park housing. I counted the other day and found that within this subset I have a total of 9 potential friends, meaning that, including me, there are only 10 people remotely close to my age who live in park housing. I've met all of them now and get along with them all, thankfully.
On the other hand, none of them are of the long-term friend type for me, and in most cases seem to get along with other people within the 10 person subset better than me. Still, I've had some great conversations with them so far. The park service attracts people from all types of backgrounds, but these people all generally share a common personality type, that type being they are people who love living in a wilderness area a long drive from anything. This personality quirk helps bind an otherwise diverse group together. This subset of 10 includes 6 men and 4 women, I am the 2nd youngest, most are late 20's to mid 30's. There are 2 maintainance, 3 law enforcement, 3 fire, and 2 interpretation (that's me) among us, and our varying schedules (everyone has different sets of days off since the park is always open and busiest on weekends) make hanging out difficult. The lack of activities besides drinking or watching TV also limits the social ability of our group, which can often devolve into rounds of shots of
The national park service is a great racket for work. I've met some people who work at Carlsbad Caverns as well, and many of the younger seasonal rangers at the two parks have spent their recent lives hopping from park to park, holding temporary positions and working and living in some of the country's most amazing locations. As soon as this possibility of employment occurred to me, I had dreams of ski instructing in the winter and working in the national parks in the summer. Not a bad life at all, and the rangers I've met who are doing it can't say a bad thing about it.
The relative ease of the work, and the workers contentment to simply live in an amazing place, however, has led me to be reintroduced to a type of a person I have not interacted with since high school; the person without a strong career drive or an ambition to succeed or excel at something. These people also work for the government, and view those coworkers with ambition skeptically, as those people are nearly always douchebags who care more about their next job than the one they are doing now. Employment in the government for those who want a raise seems all about by-the-book compliance and brown nosing your way into a higher GS pay grade, and the type of person who loves to live in the wilderness rarely loves living by the book as well, creating a void between senior rangers and seasonal rangers that is easily detected, even in just the 3 weeks I've been here. The downside to this is that my ambitions and life dreams of a Ph.D. and scientific research have rubbed members of our 10 person social herd the wrong way, and I have felt vibes of anti-intellectualism directed my way, or inklings of resentment as they see my masters degree as proof that I think that I'm better than them. And the thing is, there's a part of me that does, a part of me that has always viewed with a certain degree of shame a person whom I thought had no desire to fulfill their potential.
All negatives aside, the people I share my park housing existence with are funny, entertaining, unique, and enjoyable to spend time with a majority of the day. I am learning to simply enjoy the company of other people without judging or comparison, and I hope that they are understanding and forgiving and do the same for me, because I'll admit I can be an asshole sometimes, but I'm working it. I am using this experience to my advantage, and trying to learn from my fellow and older seasonal housing residents what living to one's potential actually means. Or what have a successful life implies and how it can vary not only from person to person but within oneself over time. This is a group of people vastly different from me, but yet with many similar basic desires, and I look forward to continuing to hang out with them. The point of this sabatical from academic work was to see what else is out there, and already just 3 weeks in, I am seeing it, and for the most part, I am enjoying it.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Hiking for a day job
Greetings from Carlsbad, NM. I'm here on my first pair of days off after starting my internship last week. So far I love what I get to do, which is basically answer visitor questions about the park. The location where I answer those questions will probably end being about 60/40 visitor center/on the trails, but for now I get to hike every day. I have to have the hiked the trails before I can answer questions about them, so my supervisor is sending me out on a new trail each day. This coming Saturday my job will be to hike up the highest mountain in Texas. That fact that I'm getting compensated to do this is awesome.
So far I've hiked all the easy trails and seen all the buildings in the park that people might visit, and I'm already feeling mostly competent answering questions at the visitor center desk. I've spent the evenings reading up on the region's geology, flora, and fauna. The geology is really cool, but really boring to people who aren't rock nerds like I am, but the short version is that mountain range is a fossilized barrier reef. The vertical relief today (see photo) is similar to what it was when there was water filling the whole basin during the Permian period 250 million years ago.
The living arrangements are interesting. The nearest gas is 30 miles away. The nearest grocery store is 55 miles. I have cell phone reception if I stand in a certain parking space at the visitor center, hold one arm up the pointing roughly southeast and stick a leg out towards the west. I live in a house with 2 fire rangers, and share a bedroom with one of them, but the place is spacious, and I have my own fridge (though I'd trade the fridge for my own room). The only people my age are the fire rangers, all the interpretation people I work with are older, either guys in their 30's to 50's who made a career of this and live in Carlsbad, or older retirees who volunteer. The fire rangers are all cool, but seem to have their own clique thing going, so making friends could prove to be difficult. At least I brought a lot of reading material.
The one key thing that has made the transition to living here much easier is the satellite TV. With no cell reception or internet, I'd have no contact with the outside world without that TV. With the TV, I've been able to watch all of OU NCAA tournament games so far.
More later as I get more settled in. Tomorrow I'm off to hike the Permian Reef Geology Trail, which I'm excited about. Finally, here's a couple photos of the mountains:
El Capitan and Guadalupe Peak (highest point in Texas at 8,749 ft).
Smith Spring (all the trees), with desert plants in the foreground and the limestone ancient reef escarpment looming in the background
So far I've hiked all the easy trails and seen all the buildings in the park that people might visit, and I'm already feeling mostly competent answering questions at the visitor center desk. I've spent the evenings reading up on the region's geology, flora, and fauna. The geology is really cool, but really boring to people who aren't rock nerds like I am, but the short version is that mountain range is a fossilized barrier reef. The vertical relief today (see photo) is similar to what it was when there was water filling the whole basin during the Permian period 250 million years ago.
The living arrangements are interesting. The nearest gas is 30 miles away. The nearest grocery store is 55 miles. I have cell phone reception if I stand in a certain parking space at the visitor center, hold one arm up the pointing roughly southeast and stick a leg out towards the west. I live in a house with 2 fire rangers, and share a bedroom with one of them, but the place is spacious, and I have my own fridge (though I'd trade the fridge for my own room). The only people my age are the fire rangers, all the interpretation people I work with are older, either guys in their 30's to 50's who made a career of this and live in Carlsbad, or older retirees who volunteer. The fire rangers are all cool, but seem to have their own clique thing going, so making friends could prove to be difficult. At least I brought a lot of reading material.
The one key thing that has made the transition to living here much easier is the satellite TV. With no cell reception or internet, I'd have no contact with the outside world without that TV. With the TV, I've been able to watch all of OU NCAA tournament games so far.
More later as I get more settled in. Tomorrow I'm off to hike the Permian Reef Geology Trail, which I'm excited about. Finally, here's a couple photos of the mountains:
El Capitan and Guadalupe Peak (highest point in Texas at 8,749 ft).
Smith Spring (all the trees), with desert plants in the foreground and the limestone ancient reef escarpment looming in the background
Sunday, March 15, 2009
What's Next
Since I graduated in December, and really for the couple months before that, I've been looking for jobs to occupy myself for at least the next 20 months. 20 months from December being the earliest I could find myself back in grad school.
After 0 job offers before I graduated, I was starting to get worried. I was still trying hard for a ski industry job, and in January I was offered the opportunity to teach skiing at Loveland Ski area in Colorado, but there was a catch. I would have to move out there in 5 days (meaning a CO to WI to CO drive and packing) and find housing, all for the chance to maybe work full time for $9.50 an hour. I made that much in 2004 to sort boxes of rocks in a warehouse in Oklahoma. I said no.
At this point I gave up on being ski bum, at least this winter. I instead focused on applying for SCA conservation internships, which are generally offered through the National Park Service, BLM, or Forest Service. It took a couple months, but last week I finally accepted an offer to work as a Visitor Services intern at Guadalupe Mountains National Park in west Texas. I think I will spend most of my time in the visitor center answering questions, selling books, and doing other miscellaneous tasks. The other 40% of my job is what I'm really looking forward to. When I'm not in the visitor center I'll either be hiking trails or working on some geology related projects, though I don't know what they are yet.
The tricky part about this position is that it's in the middle of nowhere. The nearest internet is I think 20 miles away. The nearest grocery store/town is 60 miles away. I think the park employee housing I'll be living in has a rec room with satellite TV, and I think there's cell phone reception, so I'll have connections to the rest of the world. Still, this is going to last longer than the other times I've been removed from internet/TV/cell phone on the Stretch and in Dominica, and unlike those times, I don't know how many other people close to my age, if any, I'll be able to hang out with. It's going to be interesting, and there are going to be bad/lonely days, but I'm excited. I'll be there from March 18th to June 6th.
My luck continued last week when I offered another position for the summer through the Geological Society of America's GeoCorps program. From June 22nd to September 11th I'll be working (and getting paid!, the SCA position is volunteer; I only get a small stipend for food) as a Geothermal Resource Assistant in Yellowstone National Park (come visit!). I am really looking forward to doing this.
After that, I plan to spend the rest of September and October looking for ski instructing jobs, improving my GRE score, and figuring out which grad schools I want to apply to for fall 2010. After a couple months of uncertainty, it's nice to know what I'm doing for the next few months.
After 0 job offers before I graduated, I was starting to get worried. I was still trying hard for a ski industry job, and in January I was offered the opportunity to teach skiing at Loveland Ski area in Colorado, but there was a catch. I would have to move out there in 5 days (meaning a CO to WI to CO drive and packing) and find housing, all for the chance to maybe work full time for $9.50 an hour. I made that much in 2004 to sort boxes of rocks in a warehouse in Oklahoma. I said no.
At this point I gave up on being ski bum, at least this winter. I instead focused on applying for SCA conservation internships, which are generally offered through the National Park Service, BLM, or Forest Service. It took a couple months, but last week I finally accepted an offer to work as a Visitor Services intern at Guadalupe Mountains National Park in west Texas. I think I will spend most of my time in the visitor center answering questions, selling books, and doing other miscellaneous tasks. The other 40% of my job is what I'm really looking forward to. When I'm not in the visitor center I'll either be hiking trails or working on some geology related projects, though I don't know what they are yet.
The tricky part about this position is that it's in the middle of nowhere. The nearest internet is I think 20 miles away. The nearest grocery store/town is 60 miles away. I think the park employee housing I'll be living in has a rec room with satellite TV, and I think there's cell phone reception, so I'll have connections to the rest of the world. Still, this is going to last longer than the other times I've been removed from internet/TV/cell phone on the Stretch and in Dominica, and unlike those times, I don't know how many other people close to my age, if any, I'll be able to hang out with. It's going to be interesting, and there are going to be bad/lonely days, but I'm excited. I'll be there from March 18th to June 6th.
My luck continued last week when I offered another position for the summer through the Geological Society of America's GeoCorps program. From June 22nd to September 11th I'll be working (and getting paid!, the SCA position is volunteer; I only get a small stipend for food) as a Geothermal Resource Assistant in Yellowstone National Park (come visit!). I am really looking forward to doing this.
After that, I plan to spend the rest of September and October looking for ski instructing jobs, improving my GRE score, and figuring out which grad schools I want to apply to for fall 2010. After a couple months of uncertainty, it's nice to know what I'm doing for the next few months.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Cell Phone Disaster
I think most of us are still old enough to remember life without cell phones. I remember phone trees in high school between my friends as we arranged a place and time to meet, and then promised to be there. If one of us didn't make it, we either went on without him, unconcerned, or waited a few extra minutes for him to show up, which he usually did. I remember going to Disney World in middle school with my parents, and them letting me wander off alone for an hour or so as they rested. I promised to be back by a certain time, and I was usually. Can you imagine parents today letting their kid do that without a way to be in constant contact? And to think my parents were pretty protective of me.
Nowadays we can't arrange anything without a cell phone. And I'm guilty of this too. For example, leaving for a frisbee tournament with the Pimpdags. Our driver tells each passenger what time he'll be there to pick them up. It'd make sense to be out there waiting for him right? But no, everyone waits in their room for the car to arrive, at which point the driver calls again to tell him he's arrived, and then waits as the passenger drags his crap down the stairs. If the driver is late by even a minute, straight to the cell phone, "where are you?", in spite of the fact that had the person been outside, he'd probably be able to see the driver coming down the road.
No one makes back up plans any more, "if you can't find me earlier, I'll definitely be at ____ at 11pm". Instead its "call me and I'll tell you where I'm at".
This fact of our technologically enriched lives came back to bite me in the ass a couple weeks ago in Vail. I had recently become single again after 3.5 years and Mar told me she'd show me a good time in Vail Village. She certainly did. We ended up at the main dance club and I had managed to integrate myself as complete stranger into the groups of people of dancing (my loathing of the 'dance party' attempted hook up dynamic is material for another post however). Mar and I ended up separated as she left the club to deal with some boy drama. Apparently there are drawbacks to working to the 4:1 male:female ratio in the Vail valley to your advantage.
The fact we were separated didn't concern me. We were exchanging texts about where we were and potential departure times. But then something really shitty happened. My cell phone died despite having been fully charged that morning. Attempting to maintain a signal in the basement dance club had drained it completely. Now I had no clue what Mar was up to, but I figured she knew where I was and would come get me at some point.
So last call comes around and the partygoers spill out into the streets at 2am. Mar is nowhere to be seen. I'm talking to a girl I met in the club as we walked to a bus station, and I almost ask to borrow her phone, but realize that due to the simplicity of saving contacts on my phone, I only have two phone numbers memorized anymore: my own and my home in Oklahoma. Neither is of much use to me at this moment. Mar is one of my best friends and I have no clue what her number is. In middle school I had the numbers of at least 6-8 friends memorized.
Without any way to contact Mar, I proceeded to wander about Vail village for the next hour. I probably covered at least 2 miles of ground with no sign of her. It was nearing 3am and I was approaching being royally fucked and having very realistic thoughts of curling up next to her car in the parking garage for the night.
Ironically, it was another amazing technological networking tool that saved me that night. At 2:45 I walked into a hotel lobby to warm up and saw a computer with a web browser open. I then realized there was one way I could get Mar's number: the 'My phonebook' application on Facebook. I logged on, found her number, wrote it down, and then successfully begged the front desk person to let me make the long distance call. In the second fortuitous moment of the night, Mar actually answered her phone at 3am. She had been crashing on a friends couch in his condo. We met at her car 15 minutes later and drove the 20 minutes back to her place.
This all makes a decent story, but the thing I took away from it was that I almost had to sleep on the concrete floor of a parking garage in 20 degree weather because my cell phone battery died.
And this whole thing could've been avoided if Mar and I had had this conversation as we entered the club:
Mar: If we end up getting separated, call me, but worst case scenario, lets meet outside the club at last call.
Me: Okay.
Nowadays we can't arrange anything without a cell phone. And I'm guilty of this too. For example, leaving for a frisbee tournament with the Pimpdags. Our driver tells each passenger what time he'll be there to pick them up. It'd make sense to be out there waiting for him right? But no, everyone waits in their room for the car to arrive, at which point the driver calls again to tell him he's arrived, and then waits as the passenger drags his crap down the stairs. If the driver is late by even a minute, straight to the cell phone, "where are you?", in spite of the fact that had the person been outside, he'd probably be able to see the driver coming down the road.
No one makes back up plans any more, "if you can't find me earlier, I'll definitely be at ____ at 11pm". Instead its "call me and I'll tell you where I'm at".
This fact of our technologically enriched lives came back to bite me in the ass a couple weeks ago in Vail. I had recently become single again after 3.5 years and Mar told me she'd show me a good time in Vail Village. She certainly did. We ended up at the main dance club and I had managed to integrate myself as complete stranger into the groups of people of dancing (my loathing of the 'dance party' attempted hook up dynamic is material for another post however). Mar and I ended up separated as she left the club to deal with some boy drama. Apparently there are drawbacks to working to the 4:1 male:female ratio in the Vail valley to your advantage.
The fact we were separated didn't concern me. We were exchanging texts about where we were and potential departure times. But then something really shitty happened. My cell phone died despite having been fully charged that morning. Attempting to maintain a signal in the basement dance club had drained it completely. Now I had no clue what Mar was up to, but I figured she knew where I was and would come get me at some point.
So last call comes around and the partygoers spill out into the streets at 2am. Mar is nowhere to be seen. I'm talking to a girl I met in the club as we walked to a bus station, and I almost ask to borrow her phone, but realize that due to the simplicity of saving contacts on my phone, I only have two phone numbers memorized anymore: my own and my home in Oklahoma. Neither is of much use to me at this moment. Mar is one of my best friends and I have no clue what her number is. In middle school I had the numbers of at least 6-8 friends memorized.
Without any way to contact Mar, I proceeded to wander about Vail village for the next hour. I probably covered at least 2 miles of ground with no sign of her. It was nearing 3am and I was approaching being royally fucked and having very realistic thoughts of curling up next to her car in the parking garage for the night.
Ironically, it was another amazing technological networking tool that saved me that night. At 2:45 I walked into a hotel lobby to warm up and saw a computer with a web browser open. I then realized there was one way I could get Mar's number: the 'My phonebook' application on Facebook. I logged on, found her number, wrote it down, and then successfully begged the front desk person to let me make the long distance call. In the second fortuitous moment of the night, Mar actually answered her phone at 3am. She had been crashing on a friends couch in his condo. We met at her car 15 minutes later and drove the 20 minutes back to her place.
This all makes a decent story, but the thing I took away from it was that I almost had to sleep on the concrete floor of a parking garage in 20 degree weather because my cell phone battery died.
And this whole thing could've been avoided if Mar and I had had this conversation as we entered the club:
Mar: If we end up getting separated, call me, but worst case scenario, lets meet outside the club at last call.
Me: Okay.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Tumbleweed Tag
My ranking of the worst states in the country to drive through:
1) New Jersey
2) Kansas
3) Illinois
4) Nebraska
5) Texas
Reasoning: New Jersey has a ton of traffic, and every car is driven by someone who is pissed about the fact they are in New Jersey. Jersey also makes you pay tolls in about the distance interval it takes my 15 year old Jeep to get back up to 70 mph after stopping for the previous toll. The tolls are also very odd amounts. Once I got stuck in this lane at the booth: "toll 65 cents, exact change only". I almost rear-ended another car because I was too busy frantically searching my car for a nickle.
Kansas and Nebraska are on there for the same reason. Both are very wide, flat, states that you always have to drive lengthwise across. Takes forever, nothing to look at. Kansas is worse than Nebraska because Nebraska at least has a river next to the road most of the way if you're on I-80. Illinois is in between these two states because while it's not quite as boring to drive through (though it's very close), Illinois one ups Kansas and Nebraska by adding traffic and tolls. The Chicago area is the Jersey of the Midwest, driving wise. However, while the boring scenery + traffic pushes Illinois past Nebraska, not even that combo can beat out the overwhelming blandness of Kansas.
And Texas? Well, I just plain don't like Texas.
And really, both Kansas and Nebraska should include Eastern Colorado. In many ways Eastern Colorado is worse to drive through than either of those states. It's even more desolate, and you keep expecting to see mountains and they take forever to show up.
The one saving grace about driving in eastern Colorado (or western Kansas or the TX or OK panhandles), is playing tumbleweed tag, seen in the video above. It's so dry in this region that all you need is one good windy day and half the dead bushes in the state are blowing across the road in front of you. Tumbleweeds are the one thing that is fun to hit with your car, because tumbleweeds shatter. You nail a big one and can look in your rear view mirror and see the broken remains flailing about the road. It's fun to be able to completely and utterly destroy something with no consequences, like throwing glass bottles into the recycling bin. After a good long stretch of tumbleweed tag I'll stop the Jeep and pause to remove bits of snapped off twigs stuck in its grill. Then I'll pat it on the hood, a job well done.
As you can probably tell, I didn't have video games growing up.
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Experiment
I was perusing youtube a while ago and happened upon a real cool video type: the time lapse of a road trip. So on my latest trip from Madison to Vail to Norman, I tried to make my own version. Unfortunately, I don't have a super sweet camera with a timer like this guy, and I didn't want to burn too much camera battery, so I ended up with one photo every 15 minutes. I increased that at times to 20 minutes in Nebraska because Nebraska is boring. The end result I end up with is a bit on non sequitor because of that; there's no continuity between images.
Still it's decently cool, especially the Vail to Norman leg. You can see the rainstorms I drove through in Iowa and how flat Nebraska is. It's almost better as a very fast slide show where you can pause the video to look a more interesting picture longer. In any case though, I won't be doing this again. At least not until I have a better method of pulling it off. I certainly won't run out of road trips to capture.
Still it's decently cool, especially the Vail to Norman leg. You can see the rainstorms I drove through in Iowa and how flat Nebraska is. It's almost better as a very fast slide show where you can pause the video to look a more interesting picture longer. In any case though, I won't be doing this again. At least not until I have a better method of pulling it off. I certainly won't run out of road trips to capture.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Travels
I am back in Oklahoma now, which is actually where I was when I wrote my last post, but in between I've been to Colorado twice and hung out in Wisconsin, where I continued to coach the Pimpdags and went to tournaments in Alabama and Baton Rouge. I also got to see Dartmouth in Louisiana, which was cool. Other than that, I continued my Wisconsin life as usual, played some indoor ultimate and soccer, looked for internships, made some revisions to the journal article on my masters research, etc. Nothing too interesting.
I did find the time to go skiing in Colorado twice. I skied probably my steepest slope yet (50 degrees at Breck), and have upped my cliff/cornice hucking success height to 15 feet (at Vail). Related to those events, I also purchased a helmet. Oh, and I tried telemarking for the first time. I think I caught on pretty fast and look forward to trying it again.
My main point of this post is that I've traveled quite a few (thousand) miles by car in the last two months, and when you spend that much time driving, you see some interesting things. See photos and captions below.
Near Amarillo, TX. "If you can see Jesus, you're not going to hell"
A Rural New Mexico traffic jam.
In hundreds of miles of interstate, this is the only interesting thing to see along I-80 in Nebraska, and I don't even know what it's there for. Still, it's good for looking at for about 30 seconds.
Massive ice storm in Paducah, KY, on the way to Alabama
Sunset in west Kansas near the OK border.
I did find the time to go skiing in Colorado twice. I skied probably my steepest slope yet (50 degrees at Breck), and have upped my cliff/cornice hucking success height to 15 feet (at Vail). Related to those events, I also purchased a helmet. Oh, and I tried telemarking for the first time. I think I caught on pretty fast and look forward to trying it again.
My main point of this post is that I've traveled quite a few (thousand) miles by car in the last two months, and when you spend that much time driving, you see some interesting things. See photos and captions below.
Near Amarillo, TX. "If you can see Jesus, you're not going to hell"
A Rural New Mexico traffic jam.
In hundreds of miles of interstate, this is the only interesting thing to see along I-80 in Nebraska, and I don't even know what it's there for. Still, it's good for looking at for about 30 seconds.
Massive ice storm in Paducah, KY, on the way to Alabama
Sunset in west Kansas near the OK border.
Monday, January 12, 2009
So what can you do as a Master of Science anyway?
Changed the new name of the blog. Still describes my situation, but is more upbeat about it, which matches my current disposition on the situation.
I have a bunch of applications out now for a bunch of different stuff. I have an interview at Loveland Ski Area next weekend for a ski instructor position. I have a couple applications in with the USGS, and I'm applying for a bunch of internships at National Park Service Lands, both through the GeoCorps and the Student Conservation Association (SCA). Hopefully those options will get me through most of this year. We'll see how it goes.
On Wednesday I head off for Colorado (again) for the 13th (I think) annual Father/Son ske weekend, based in Frisco, CO. After that it's back to Madison for an undetermined amount of time. Right now I'm still enjoying the whole no responsibilities thing, but I expect to get stir crazy in a few weeks if I haven't found something to do by then.
I have a bunch of applications out now for a bunch of different stuff. I have an interview at Loveland Ski Area next weekend for a ski instructor position. I have a couple applications in with the USGS, and I'm applying for a bunch of internships at National Park Service Lands, both through the GeoCorps and the Student Conservation Association (SCA). Hopefully those options will get me through most of this year. We'll see how it goes.
On Wednesday I head off for Colorado (again) for the 13th (I think) annual Father/Son ske weekend, based in Frisco, CO. After that it's back to Madison for an undetermined amount of time. Right now I'm still enjoying the whole no responsibilities thing, but I expect to get stir crazy in a few weeks if I haven't found something to do by then.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Good Morning
While probably not exactly what Kanye West intended (I'm awful at extracting the intended meaning from creative works), I've been identifying with this song recently. To me it points out the irony that despite all the hard work it takes to earn a college degree, all you really get is a piece of paper that says you finished; you haven't accomplished anything until you do something with that degree. 'Good morning' can be interpreted with optimism or pessimism, but either way you are waking up to a world you barely know, the world outside of academia. On one hand there is excitement for being free of all constraints, all protection, free to pursue your dreams and make a living. On the other hand, leaving the insulated bubble of college can give you a sudden, 'oh shit, now what' reaction. And when the economy is in the situation it is now, I can feel that pessimism creeping in when I consider the options for my immediate future.
On December 21st I graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a Master of Science degree in Geophysics. My thesis focused on using radar measurements to observe volcanic deformation, known within the geophysical community as InSAR. How applicable is this skill? It depends on what you mean by 'applicable'. InSAR is one of those things that only matters to the people within the science who use it. I can't exactly go up to a consulting firm and say 'hire me, I know how to use InSAR'. What I do have going for me is the whole Masters degree thing. As absurd as it sounds, I am now a master of science. I feel like I should be able move rocks with my mind with a title like that, but it's just a piece of paper. However, that piece of paper does represent a standard of independent thought and effort. The next months will show what exactly I can do with as a master of science.
For those keeping track at home, yes, I did complete a masters degree with a thesis in just 16 months, and yes, it was insane, and no, I did not choose this path myself. A lack of funding in my department for this spring forced a decision on me early in 2008: either graduate in December or start paying tuition again. Since my parents already put down $160,000 to put me through Dartmouth, I had no money myself, and my graduate school experience thus far had shown me that I could use some time off, I chose the December graduation. After a year of classes and relative slacking, a summer and fall of hard work, late nights, and the development of a thesis gut this past November, I met my goal of getting out of UW while I was still financially supported, leaving me here, now.
I currently plan to pursue a Ph.D. in some field of geophysics I have yet to decide on. I didn't have time to apply to schools this fall, so now I have 17-20 months with which to occupy myself before starting school again in fall 2010. Or that's the current plan. As I found out around this time last year, well-laid plans can change quickly. So much for my 5 year Ph.D. plan based in Madison, WI. Given the great uncertainty facing me currently, I've decided yet again to be a regular blogger, thinking I may be doing things worth writing about. Grad school, while made entertaining and humorous by PhD comics, proved to be a less than inspiring writing topic for me. Nobody I know besides my advisor really cares about InSAR, and that's all I've been doing for the past 6 months.
This all leads to the currently working title for this, the third iteration of my blog (the first was Dominica in 2006, the second was Jan-May 2008 as basically an ultimate tourney write-up blog): Life on Pause. I say 'on Pause', because while I'm out of school, I plan to go back, leaving me in this purgatory of needing to find a job, but not one that is a career-type which would limit my ability to quit in 20 months. In the meantime I'm going to try have fun, maybe land some internships, be a ski bum, study for GRE's, maybe do some independent research, road trip a lot, anything to keep me entertained and hopefully bring in a pay check. We'll see how it goes.
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